In this episode, Crystal Wilkinson reads her story “Endangered Species: Case 47401” from Story magazine. Crystal Wilkinson is the author of three books, including The Birds of Opulence, (winner of the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence), Water Street and Blackberries, Blackberries. Nominated for both the Orange Prizes and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, she…

In this episode, Lea Carpenter reads her story “Candy Cane” from the Summer 2019 issue of the Sewanee Review. Lea Carpenter is the author of Eleven Days (Knopf, 2013) and Red, White, Blue (Knopf, 2018). She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Princeton and has an MBA from Harvard Business School, where she was valedictorian. She is a Contributing…

In this episode, Erin Somers reads her story “Waltz” from the Summer 2019 issue of Ecotone. Erin Somers’s writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Tin House Open Bar, Ploughshares, American Short Fiction, McSweeney’s, The Cincinnati Review, and many other publications. She holds an MFA from the University of New Hampshire and was a 2016 NYC…

In this episode, John Miguel Shakespear reads his story “We The Living” from the Fall 2019 issue of The Cincinnati Review. John Miguel Shakespear is a writer, editor, and musician from Massachusetts. He is pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing from Vanderbilt University, where he is a 2019-20 creative writing fellow at the Curb Center for…

In this episode, Tiphanie Yanique reads her story “The Special World” from the Winter 2019 issue of The Georgia Review. Tiphanie Yanique is the author of the poetry collection Wife, which won the 2016 Bocas Prize in Caribbean poetry and the United Kingdom’s 2016 Forward/Felix Dennis Prize for a First Collection. She is also the author of…

In this episode, Catherine Browder reads her story “Wind Phone” from the Summer 2019 issue of New Letters. Catherine Browder is the author of several books of short fiction and a new  novel. She has held fiction fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and Missouri Arts Council. Her award-winning stories have appeared in Kansas…

In this episode, Alexis Pauline Gumbs reads her hybrid story “Gut” from Obsidian 45.1. NOTES i. nature from “Rethinking ‘Aesthetics’ Notes Towards a Deciphering Practice” by Sylvia Wynter, 272 ii. the correlated otherness continuum from “Human Being as Noun? Or Being Human as Praxis? Towards the Autopoetic Turn/Overturn” by Sylvia Wynter, 22 iii. name from…

In this episode, Colleen O’Brien reads her story “Charlie” from the Summer 2019 issue of the Gettysburg Review. Colleen O’Brien’s chapbook, Spool in the Maze, won the DIAGRAM/New Michigan Press contest. Her short stories and poems have appeared in Fence, Kenyon Review Online, The Antioch Review, Denver Quarterly, and other journals. The Gettysburg Review, published by Gettysburg College, is recognized…

In this episode, Robert Long Foreman reads his story “Weird Pig Meets Owen Flye” from Chicago Quarterly Review, Volume 29.   Robert Long Foreman‘s first novel, Weird Pig, (which this story is adapted from) won the Nilsen Prize for a First Novel. It will be published in October 2020. His collection of short stories, I Am Here to…

In this episode, the debut of The Stack, Yxta Maya Murray reads her story “After Maria” from Conjunctions 73: Earth Elegies.   Yxta Maya Murray is a writer and law professor living in Los Angeles. She won an Art Writers Grant in 2018. Her new novel, Art Is Everything, is forthcoming from Northwestern University Press/Curbstone. Her collection…